


the fabric of us

by valkyrierising



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post Season 2, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 20:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8815459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyrierising/pseuds/valkyrierising
Summary: They soldiered on, knowing the universe was gonna get screwed or they could save it, but it was supposed to be as a team. Johnny’s absence is felt -  Dutch paces more, a barely restrained jungle cat longing to escape.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadowkeeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkeeper/gifts).



He was in the middle of cleaning the glasses when the oddest sensation, like he’s _upset_ , crashes into him.

 

“Shot?” Someone requests, a voice that sounds suspiciously close to Johnny’s. The glass all but slips from his hands, narrowly avoiding a fate of broken glass from the floor as he turns. The unknown man just stands there as he answers, turns to give him his drink, knowing that it wasn’t Johnny and that he wasn’t coming back, at least not for a while. D’avin looks up from Pree’s double-take there, a slight half smile on his face as he looks to their table. Nodding, he brings down a bottle of whiskey they pass around that's been their regular since they've taken to regrouping to his corner once a week.

 

Ever since Pawter’s death, the revelation that they were being used as guinea pigs, everyone was off kilter and on edge. Worse, Pawter’s death a consequence of threatening to reveal the truth and the fact that Dutch had an evil twin running around orchestrating this, led to foul and gloomy moods. They soldiered on, knowing the universe was gonna get screwed or they could save it, but it was supposed to be as a team. Johnny’s absence is felt -  Dutch paces more, a barely restrained jungle cat longing to escape.

 

He knew Dutch had a her laissez-faire attitude regarding RAC rules in her time as an agent but this news, the complicity the RAC most definitely had in allowing mass genocide, set her in a tailspin. She wasn't a blind follower, but she believed in the RAC and her anchor (Johnny) leaving affected her especially. They were all untethered, a missing piece of their jigsaw puzzle. There was loyalty for _her_ people, and protecting innocents, but everyone else in between was fair game. The youngest Jaqobis was also kind, a smartass, but unfailingly kind. The last few genuine do-gooders in this awful sinkhole of a universe.

 

He was frankly a little hurt that Johnny hadn’t talked to him, knowing the others felt the same. Dutch admitted she spoke to him before his departure, feeling selfish about not immediately telling them but wanted to give him a head start. He knew how much Pawter meant to him, meant to them all, and both he and Dutch felt awful for wanting Johnny to come back where they could all mourn her together. Grief works in the oddest ways, he muses, slotting a glass between two others. He only hopes that he’s not doing anything stupid. The shine of the glass caught the light, looking up to see another reflection of Fancy, D’avin and Dutch as they played cards in a corner.

 

Finding out that Dutch had an evil crazy bitch ass twin was just the icing on the shitcake of the current year, absurdity in the worst way. No one could match Dutch and her essence, fire incarnate and awe-inspiring. But someone did, and that someone was most likely the cause of the universe being fated for some old-fashioned eugenic genocide. Pawter didn't even get a martyrdom, her death quieted as quickly as it happened, a warning shot to others that there would be no one speaking out. If a member of the 9 houses could be murdered, while the others stood on watching no less, they needed to regain as much of their forces as they could.

 

However that needed all of Team Awesome Force - himself not necessarily included but definitely a helpful asset.

 

Pree, for all his grouching when they returned and almost drank him out of his bar, thanked the maker of the universe for blessing him with a friend in Dutch (and the Jaqobis). Sure, they ran up a tab like no other that sometimes took months before they even got close to paying it off - even if he did have it as an open check in which payment could be joy or favors - but it was minor in comparison to the steadfast companionship and loyalty that were the Killjoys, Jaqobis brothers, and Dutch herself.  
  
The Killjoys - Dutch - have always been something of a constant in his life since he moved here. Old Town as the wasteland of the universe, where the overworked and the distraught were shipped off to mine for the bigger countries that the RAC thrived off on. The Royale a pet project of his that he used whatever he could from when he cut and ran from to being here in Old Town like a semi-reformed warlord. No one asked questions and he liked for people to remember joy once in awhile, necessary respite from the bleakness of the situation that no one was ever getting out of it. The company wasn’t always the best but they were business. However, when the locals got too rowdy they made for terrible drunks and terrible drunks made for loud customers, which made for cocky ones and cocky drunks like to fight. He _liked_ having his bar in one piece.

 

Bless the maker, it was during one of the moments that Johnny and Dutch walked in from what he gathered was an op because they were pretty chummy with each other. Heads darting up from the closeness, as if sensing the escalating tensions, Dutch dashing toward a man with an arm ready for swinging, Johnny taking the other, moving fast to shove them out. knew they were Killjoys and occasionally kept the peace, but most people minded their own business. Drunks made for bad business. He choose not to think what it meant that they liked to fight in _his_ bar constantly. She came in, a badass patron saint of ass kicking, and it was in the moment where he heard a nose crunch (which would make for a hideous symmetry - broken noses were always messy) and the sound of someone getting winded, the bodies dropping to the ground, disorientation and bruising fighting down the attitudes that were being rankled that it clicked - Dutch was a special person. The cheery cheeky persona, with her kind eyes and no nonsense attitude and her exceptional diffusion skills (so what if she had to manhandle a couple of people? Where was the fun in that?) that he realized he should be friends with her.

 

You didn’t get to be a stylish dictator if you couldn’t pinpoint the great ones, those that seemed destined for greatness. And Dutch was about as top tier as you could get given Old Town’s Old Town-ness. People who kept their heads down, noses in their own business. Obviously, everyone wanted to collect their joy and go on living with their damn existence, but Dutch lived for her job, passionate about helping people in a universe that self-served, where the rich kept themselves richer, and the plebeians would toil. But she never put the warrant before friends, and she was clever, bending ways around warrants if her own moral compass pegged the bounty as innocent.

 

She racked up favors like candy, working magnetically. She had an energy around her, an aura mesmerizing to all - if one didn’t know better, they’d have thought it was an act but knowing Dutch and her lioness spirit, it was all true. The galaxy needed more people like her.

 

He grabs a bottle of whiskey and another glass, D’avin pushes out a chair to his arrival and punches Fancy. He raises an eyebrow just as Fancy extends a hand to the whiskey.

 

“How is she?” He asks as he joins their shitty half-assed game of Crazy Diamonds and shuffles the deck.

 

“I’m almost tempted to go hunt him down,” Fancy begins as Dutch moves towards the dartboard area, the whistle of her knives through the air causes him to look up, “but Dutch tells me he has a half-robot friend aboard who can probably hurt anyone that touches him and I’ve already filled up my quota of dying this year.”

 

He’s poured whiskey into his and D’av’s glass, leaning across the table to pour some into Pree’s.

 

“You know I knew my brother and Dutch were thick as thieves but she’s even more quieter without him here.”

 

“From scary assassin to even scarier assassin without the better Jaqobis,” Fancy smirks at D’avin, who punches him again.

 

“Boys please,” Pree sighs as he deals out cards. “Dutch needs you both in one piece. Did you get anything from those freelancers past the j-cluster?”

 

“Nothing. We keep circling back to Arkyn to see if Aneela might be hiding in plain sight but nothing.”

 

“We’re running ourselves ragged. It won’t do us any good to keep chasing down any time we hear so much as a whisper. Also fold,” Fancy points to D’avin. “You owe me.”

 

“What? Fuck off,” D’avin says as he leans to see the hand, throwing his own down in turn.

 

“Time to move Dutch away from the pointy knives,” Pree says, a dozing drunk that was slipping to the ground waking up by the thud of Dutch's knives hitting the board, her shuffling to grab them and repeat it ad infinitum repetitive, looked warily on. “She’ll scare away business.”

 

“I miss him,” she says when they near her, not really looking at them.

 

“We all do,” Pree says as he places a hand on her shoulder. She leans into him, wrapping him in a hug. D’avin joins in from the side, dragging Fancy in too. They’re Dutch’s people, a mish-mash of people that could rely on each other. They’re family, brought together by Dutch. And they’re all cute as well, which is a bonus given that he has to see them all the time.

 

Dutch pushes them all off her, one by one, schooling her pensive expression into the determined one they’ve been seeing more and more of. “Next stop - just a little bit past the J. Ex-client, saw something regarding my evil bitch look-alike snooping around.”

 

“Lead us on,” Fancy extends his arms, the sarcasm slipping slightly as Dutch rolled her eyes at him. Dutch would be okay in the end. They would continue forward but she wouldn’t unravel without him, even if he felt like a missing limb. Dutch, above all else, loved, and would carry the good memories. 

 

“Go get that crazy bitch,” he says, squeezing her arm, moving back to behind the bar counter.


End file.
